Random Fives

Let's wrap up the week with some completely random lists of five.

Five TV Shows I Am Perfectly Happy To Have Never Seen
1. Glee
2. Desperate Housewives
3. Any televised dancing show
4. Any show where some woman talks to ghosts or dead people
5. Ugly Betty

Five Great TV Shows I Watch That Deserve More Attention Than They Are Getting
1. Community
2. Parks & Rec
3. Party Down
4. Parenthood
5. Chuck

Five Bands That Are Apparently Cool That I Heard At Least One Song From and Didn't Like At All
1. MGMT
2. Wilco
3. Arctic Monkeys
4. Vampire Weekend
5. Phoenix

Five Singers/Bands I Do Like (might surprise some people)
1. Taylor Swift
2. Ke$ha
3. Katy Perry
4. Fergie
5. Paramore

Five Guys Currently Really Underachieving on my Fantasy Team
1. Raul Ibanez
2. Wandy Rodriguez
3. Clayton Kershaw
4. Hideki Okajima
5. Victor Martinez...hopefully the bomb last night is the start of something

Five Teams I Will Always Hate, No Matter What*
1. New York Yankees
2. Los Angeles Lakers
3. New York Jets
4. New York Knicks
5. University of Arizona Wildcats
* Unless A.J. ended up playing for one of them. Which is a blog for another day.

A new blog and some fake baseball

Daddy Will Do It

This one's not going to be for everybody. It's a new blog I just started, and it is only going to be about my kid (soon to be kids!) and about me trying to be healthy. That's it. Don't click the link lightly. There will be sadness, sappiness, and pain there. But I hope there will be some good moments too. I've considered blogging about one or the other for a while now, so combining those two seems like a good idea. Feel free to check it out. If it's not your bag, I completely understand. No hard feelings. This blog will still be here, with way too much babbling about movies, TV, and sports.

Like my fake baseball teams, for example.

We're at the All Star break, which is a perfect time to assess things, and to pull a muscle giving myself a pat on the back for how awesome I am. I'm in one money roto league this year, the one with the first year auction draft, and I'm in first place at the break. This is great, because there was a cash bonus for this accomplishment. It's also nice because I'm in great shape to win this league and the big prize at the end of the season. I intentionally loaded up on offense and amassed a huge lead in steals, so last month I traded speedy Rays outfielder Carl Crawford for shaggy Giants ace Tim Lincecum. This move has worked out in a crazy good way. In the six starts since I acquired him, Lincecum has gone 5-0 with ungodly peripherals: a 1.29 ERA and a 0.80 WHIP, along with 54 Ks in 48.2 innings.

I was actually in first place at the time of the trade, with 102 points. A lot of owners would be satisified with this and simply stand pat, but I knew that my abundance of steals and my ability to move up in so many pitching categories made this trade a great one for me. I've moved up 2, 3, 4, and 2 spots in wins, Ks, ERA, and WHIP, to 113.5 total, good for a healthy five point lead.

I'm going to run away with this league.

My other fake baseball team is the mighty Chatham Bluefish squad of the computer-based SWBA Diamond Mind league. This is the simulation that uses actual statistics to play games. My Fighting 'Fish are the two time defending league champs and right now we are running away with our division, playing .700 ball and already looking ahead to October with visions of an unprecedented three-peat.

And that's not even all the good news. Since the computer uses all real-life stats, the game is always one season behind. That means my potential three-peaters are doing it with 2008's numbers. So how am I shaping up for next year? I have Albert Pujols having one of the greatest offensive seasons in the history of the game. My 2B, SS, LF, and DH all made the All Star team, as did a couple of my pitchers. The 2010 Chatham offense is going to be all-time good, and I'll have enough pitching to be in the mix to win another championship. And this is before even drafting anyone next year, where I always manage to work a little magic.

In other words, yes...I'm a big, huge dork. Enjoy the All Star game tonight.

Fantasy baseball draft #2

I haven't watched ER in years but I decided to check in for the retrospective and the swan song on Thursday night. Coupled with Survivor, this meant that I'd be spending several consecutive hours sitting around not doing much. Perfect opportunity to participate in another fantasy baseball draft! I jumped onto ESPN and randomly joined a league with their standard settings: ten team mixed 5X5 draft. I got the first pick. Here's how it went.

1. Hanley Ramirez. Positional scarcity, steals, stud. What's not to like?
2. Dustin Pedroia. All of the above, plus now I at least own him in one league.
3. Lance Berkman. Solid, and I needed the most reliable power guy left on the board.
4. Matt Holliday. I think he is an outright steal with the 40th pick in the draft. People are acting like he's just going to die outside of Coors Field, and that is not happening.
5. Brandon Webb. As reliable as starters get.
6. David Ortiz. I thought this was a good spot to roll the dice on a return to form. If he gets hurt I can replace him with anyone since he is only eligible as a utility guy now.
7. Magglio Ordonez.
8. Joakim Soria. The Mexicutioner is probably the best nickname in baseball.
9. Jon Lester. He can absolutely win the Cy Young if the big 2008-09 innings pitched bump doesn't bite him.
10. Chris Young, OF, AZ. Solid 20-20 guy and I can handle his lower batting average.
11. Rich Harden. Rolling the dice for maximum return makes a ton of sense in these 10 team mixed leagues.
12. Victor Martinez. Stud or injury bust. I don't see a lot of middle ground.
13. Chone Figgins. 40 steals at a corner slot is nice.
14. Xavier Nady. He has to produce as a Yankee regular, right?
15. Ricky Nolasco. Breakout year coming up.
16. Kevin Gregg. Has been lights out, but I should handcuff him with Marmol now.
17. Carlos Guillen. Unsexy, solid player.
18. Shin-Soo Choo. I'm going with Matthew Berry on this one.
19. Chad Qualls. Great cheap closer.
20. Rickie Weeks. Always a chance he could put it all together, and if not backup middle infielder is an easy fill.
21. Carlos Marmol. A bit of a reach this early but I have the Cubs closers covered and I like having a high strikeout middle man to run out there every day. Should buzzard some wins and end up with saves as well.
22. Wandy Rodriguez. There were tons of decent fantasy 5th starter types left. I like the upside and I like the K rate.
23. Brad Ziegler. Steal. Joey Devine may be out for the year.
24. Elijah Dukes. More of that breakout upside I was looking for.
25. Johnny Cueto.

Obviously I was really aggressive with some of these picks, but if even half of them work out then my team will be absolutely stacked. It's a "just for fun" league with no prizes and nobody I know playing, but I figure since I had all my draft scouting done...why not?

I may sneak in one more draft before the weekend ends.

Baseball auction recap

Fantasy baseball geekery of the highest order ahead; proceed at your own risk.

On Monday night I had an auction draft for a first year fantasy baseball league. Actually, it isn't my first time playing with these guys. Most of them are friends with my wife from college and I've been playing in their leagues for a few years now. But this was the first time we switched from heads-up scoring to straight Roto, and more importantly, the first time we did an auction instead of a draft. All good things. We also use not just four, or even five, but six categories each for hitting and pitching, adding OPS and holds to the standard 5X5 format.

I didn't come in with one firm plan in mind, because that can often be a road to ruin if your fellow owners don't cooperate. Instead, I thought there were two likely scenarios on how this would go with a bunch of guys that have never participated in a baseball auction before: either people would be gun shy, and there would be great buys early, or they would throw money around like drunken sailors on shore leave during the draft's early moments.

It was mostly the latter.

I had designs on grabbing one of the top three players on my board: Hanley Ramirez, Albert Pujols, or David Wright, and I was prepared to spend $40 of my $260 budget on one. That didn't happen, as each name was thrown out very early and they sold for $42, $45, and $43 respectively. Jose Reyes, Ryan Braun, and Miguel Cabrera quickly joined the $40 club as well, and I bought none of them. Time to adjust the strategy on the fly. I had a master list of top hitters broken up into two tiers. I was immediately shut out of my tier one guys, but many of my stud tier twos remained. I entered the draft planning on getting at least three of them. I proceeded to happily double that.

Who would have guessed that my first purchase would wear the dreaded pinstripes? For $34, come on down, Mark Teixeira. Sure, I hate him, but he is going to rake balls into that short porch in right and he will post elite numbers in five categories. Next up: Astros 1B Lance Berkman for $33, an outright steal at that price compared to what his slugging brethren were fetching. I don't expect steals in the high teens again, but as long as he is mostly healthy he will fill up all six offensive categories nicely. My third acquisition was Dodgers OF Matt Kemp for $26, and that's the last time for a long time that he will be going for sub-$30 in any league. He hits, his power is ticking up, he swipes bags (35 steals last year) and now he will be in a lineup with Manny Ramirez for an entire season. Kemp is also all of 24 years old. Boom.

I grabbed Evan Longoria shortly thereafter, loving his upside at the hot corner for $30. I gritted my teeth and watched my beloved Dustin Pedroia go for the same price. I love Dusty--I mean, he's a Sun Devil and a Red Sock, come on!--but I just couldn't pay the frieght on that. I really hope he proves me wrong. Diamondbacks starter Dan Haren became my first pitcher, and the key to my staff. I planned to load up on cheap pitchers later and did exactly that, but I needed one reliable guy. Haren fit the bill.

Steals are often a tough category to manage, and if you don't come away with them on draft day they can be particularly difficult to acquire, so I had every intention of coming away with a number I thought would put me in the top 3-4 in the league. I did that and then some, grabbing Dreamy Jacoby Ellsbury and soon-to-bounce-back superstar Carl Crawford. Those two alone should tally over 100 combined thefts this year. I grabbed some great cheap speed as well: Rangers rookie Elvis Andrus and Astros' 2B Kaz Matusi should combine for over 50 and they cost me just a buck each.

Everything sounds great so far, right? Not so fast. In the early and mid-early rounds, I kept grabbing offensive studs at reasonable rates. Kevin Youkilis, come on down. Jason Bay with a full season in Fenway? Yes, please! This was all great, but before I knew it, I was down to less than $20 with about 16 spots to fill. In a way, I had hoped that this would become my strategy all along, for a few reasons. First, I was prepared for the "$1 endgame" of the draft, and that worked out as well as I could have hoped, as the only thing close to a $1 reach was my backup catcher--I got both of my backstops for a buck each, in fact. But at the end, there were plenty of players left that I would have been happy to add to my squad, exactly as I thought there would be. I cornered the market on the Red Sox 5th starter slot by grabbing the entire trio of Brad Penny, Clay Buchholz, and John Smoltz for a buck a pop. I'll shelve Smoltz on the DL and maybe stash Clay on my bench for a bit to see how things play out. He has been lights out this spring, and his upside if he grabs a full time rotation spot could be a gigantic difference-maker. Some of my end game $1 pickups that I think will be worth much more than what I paid: Chris Ray, Juan Rivera, Hideki Okajima, and Damaso Marte, to name a few.

I predicted that middle relievers would be undervalued, even with holds as a category, and they were. Does it really take much to figure out that closers have less value than ever when saves are only 1/12th of a team's score? I guess it does, because mediocre closers went for double and triple the prices paid to great middle men. I only have one legit 40 save closer right now, but I plan to play the waiver wire like a harp, stream pitchers on and off my roster all season, and trade some steals for what I need in mid summer.

It will be a fun league and an enjoyable season. My team is not an impregnable juggernaut like I thought it might be, but I certainly have strengths to work from. I'll be in the money, and if things break right, I make timely additions, and I swing a key trade or two I think I could be in position to win the whole thing.